Analog and RF (radio frequency) integrated circuits are increasingly difficult and costly to design and manufacture due in large part to the inability to predict silicon realities prior to manufacturing. For this reason it is desirable to have the ability to (re)configure such an integrated circuit (IC), after at least the semiconductor portion of the circuit is manufactured, in order to repair defects or excessive parameter variation. Using metal mask configurable designs is one way to provide this configurability.
Additionally, such configurability can provide a way to change the analog/RF circuit configuration, post-manufacturing, to perform different functions. For example, the proliferation of wireless systems and the requirement for the inter-operability according to wireless standards have driven a seemingly insatiable demand for low power and high density RF integrated circuits. Providing for some level of post-manufacturing configurability can reduce the need to include multiple sets of RF receiver circuits on a single chip, which would otherwise increase mutual coupling, die cost, complexity, and/or power consumption. The higher complexity alone would create difficult challenges related to design cost and manufacturability since multiple designs would need to function properly for the large-scale parameter variations and process defects which can occur with analog circuits.